


Before We Were Criminals

by lmeden



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-08
Updated: 2011-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-14 14:17:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/150098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lmeden/pseuds/lmeden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A one story house, with white siding and a green front door. It has a child’s stained glass project hanging in the front window, and some fading geraniums in the front yard. And the laundry in the backyard is half-hung.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before We Were Criminals

**Author's Note:**

> For more information on narcolepsy, or to clarify anything, go [here](http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/guide/narcolepsy).

He straightens; sweat shines on the curve of his forehead and his pale lips part. The dark hair lying against his neck curls limply, struggling against the summer heat. Sunlight turns the tips of his hair gold. His cranes his neck as he looks up at the clothesline, swooping low a foot above him. He reaches up and hangs a translucent sheet from it, slowly affixing the pins.

Dom watches this from inside the house, air conditioning swirling around and chilling him. The boy’s mother stands next to Dom, watching him.

“Please,” she says, her voice soft and the lines around her mouth hard.

He glances at her, then back to the boy – the boy is maybe fifteen years old, perhaps older, for the curls of his hair lend him an air of youthful innocence.

“What is it you want of me?”

The woman’s desperation makes him uncomfortable. His fee is high, prohibitively so. This woman should not have been able to afford to have him even come to her small house with his PASIV. He doesn’t want to even consider what she did, what this woman gave away, in order for Dom to come and look at her son.

She turns to the fabricated kitchen table behind them, pulls out a squealing chair, and sits. “Please sit,” she says quietly, watching her son through the glass of the back door, and so Dom does.

Her hands knot and clench on the table before her before she speaks. “My son, Arthur, has narcolepsy.”

“I cannot—“ Dom begins before he can think. Narcolepsy, though it concerns sleep and dreams, is a biological disorder. He can do nothing for it with his PASIV and psychologist’s degree. He can offer her no cure.

The woman shoots Dom a thin glare, shoving dark hair behind her ear with an impatient hand. “I am not asking for you to cure his disorder. I know very well that nothing can be done for it, and besides, his case is mild. Arthur does not fall asleep at any time, anywhere, like some. He sleeps often, but…”

“Lately his sleep has not been normal.”

When she looks at Dom, her eyes are wild. She looks away again. “He used to sleep so _peacefully_. He would fall under for an hour or so, and that would be it. At school, he was able to go to the nurse’s office to sleep it off. Now he…now he has nightmares. He begins dreaming before he is fully asleep. As he lies down in bed, I can see the terror in his eyes. And it’s not just fear, it’s…he doesn’t see me. He sees something else, and it’s terrifying him. I cannot wake him when he sleeps. He won’t wake. He is doing badly in school, he can’t concentrate, he doesn’t sleep normally, and I _can’t do anything_.”

Her head bows, and when she looks up again her gaze is fierce. “You are the preeminent dream psychologist – in _the entire world_. You must stop these nightmares.”

Dom struggles to recall what he knows of narcolepsy, staring at the backyard baking under the white summer sun to hide his thoughts. Hallucinations are not uncommon with narcolepsy, he remembers, especially while falling asleep or waking. That could explain the boy’s seeing things that are not there. But it should not be terrifying to him. None of it should be, not the dreams, the hallucinations, any of it.

The woman’s chair suddenly scrapes back from the table, and Dom jumps, glancing at her. She is staring out the window, eyes wild. Dom turns and watches as the boy, as Arthur, slowly sags to the ground, laundry pooling under him in the dust. His head is bowed, his body limp, as if all of his energy has been suddenly sucked from him.

Dom stands as well and the woman rushes forward, grasping the glass door and sliding it open, striding out across the backyard. Dom follows. When she reaches her son, she bows down, grasping his shoulders. He slowly looks up at her. Dom comes up behind her and leans over to see Arthur.

He is pale, and his fine features twist with pain. He looks directly at his mother, but he does not seem to see her. Instead, he stares as if he sees a monster, and his lips are parted, moving silently. After a moment, Dom realizes that he is trying to say, over and over, “No.”

Arthur slowly sags, the awareness draining from his face and eyes dulling. His blinks last longer and longer, until his eyes to not open again, and he begins to slump towards the ground. Dom moves forward, whispering,

“Here, let me,” and reaching out for the boy.

“No.” the woman snaps, looping the boy’s arm around her shoulder and standing, pulling him half up with her. “I can manage.”

When she has raised Arthur high enough, she quickly reaches down, slipping her arm under Arthur’s legs and pulling him close to her chest. His head lolls. She begins walking quickly back to the house, son cradled in her arms, Dom following.

He can see now, why the woman is so worried. He thinks of Mal, likely pacing at home, annoyed by her inability to work because she is pregnant. They argued, earlier, but Dom still feels that the risks of using somnacin while pregnant are too high. Anything can happen. That point seems especially real now, as he watches the effect that Arthur’s dreams have had upon him.

The woman turns and steps sideways through the house’s back door. By the time Dom reaches the back door and slides it closed behind him, she is gone from sight. He can hear her heavy footsteps on the wood floor, in another room, and soon he hears the squeak of bedsprings. He follows the noise, wending his way through the one-floor ranch house until he finds them; Arthur lies, face contorted in sleep on a bed, his mother sitting on the edge next to him.

Dom decides to take the case, then. He cannot leave this boy here, suffering, and his mother helpless. Besides, there should be no dangers here. Whatever the boy fears, it is likely monsters, and if Dom takes care to construct a dream in a safe place, where the boy can relax, perhaps he will be able to manipulate Arthur’s dreams to his benefit. He will fetch the PASIV from the car, but first…

“Show me around the house,” he asks, and Arthur’s mother slowly stands, releasing her son’s hand to fall limply on the bed, clutching at nothing. This house will be the most suitable setting for a dream, the most comforting place that Dom can imagine for Arthur.

She nods, and moves past without looking at him.

-

He opens his eyes to pitch darkness, blinks. Has he opened his eyes at all? It is a disturbingly penetrating question, and Dom attempts to consider it in the most literal way possible. Is he dreaming, or awake? Has the somnacin affected him badly? He curses, not for the first time, having no method of ascertaining whether he is in reality or a dream. He will have to remember to bring the subject up with Mal. Later.

Then he feels the pressure across his eyes, turning round the curves of his skull and pressing into its base, and he realizes that he is blindfolded. Unusual, surely. And not appropriate to the dream that he had designed, at all. This is no longer his dream. Someone else, presumably Arthur, has taken control. Does this mean that he is now within Arthur’s nightmare?

He takes in a deep breath, comforted by the realization that only his eyes are bound – all his limb seem free to move. As long as he remains calm, the projections should ignore him. He should remain, relatively, unmolested.

As Dom relaxes, he stretches his fingers over his knees. He listens, detecting the almost silent thrum of a car engine. He feels no acceleration, and assumes that they are idling.

There is a subtle vibration, and Dom feels that the car had been shut off. Suddenly, something slams into him, and he is shoved violently down and over until his head mashes into the leather, or faux, or whatever of the car seat.

Strong hands grasp his arms before he can push himself up, pulling him from the car. His knees slam against the open door and legs drag over the rough ground. Then he gets his feet under him and his balance back. He still cannot see. The hands on his upper arms pull him forward and he stumbles again. His captors take advantage of this to push him down upon his knees. He catches himself on his hands, bruising them, and clenches against the ground.

Damn. He hates this, this utter weakness within the dreamer’s mind. He dare not damage the dreamer, the boy Arthur. Of course, he could fight back, and the temptation is strong, for he has learned much, dreaming, and is quite competent, but violent action would be overkill. He should wait, see what happens. As long as he isn’t injured or killed in the process.

A cool, hard object presses against him temple. After a second, Dom identifies it as a gun. He goes absolutely still.

Above him, a soft voice says, in what is not a question, but obviously a command, “What do you want.”

Dom slowly raises his hands from the ground and spreads them, palms out. “Nothing at all. I was just dreaming.”

A sharp intake of breath above him. “Dreaming of _what_?” the voice snaps.

“Just a house,” Dom says quietly, calmly. He is beginning to suspect that the man threatening him is, in fact, Arthur. And even if it isn’t, he may be able to draw Arthur out, shift the dream to something less deadly, perhaps. “A one story house, with white siding and a green front door. It has a child’s stained glass project hanging in the front window, and some fading geraniums in the front yard.” The gun presses tighter to his temple for an instant. “And the laundry in the backyard is half-hung.”

The gun trembles, and seeing an opportunity to diffuse the situation, Dom reaches up, fast as he can, snatching the barrel of the gun. He pushes it back against the hand holding it, loosening the man’s grip, and then down. He twists and the gun comes free.

He stands, gun held low, and reaches up with one hand to pull the blindfold from his eyes. He squints against the sudden bright light; car headlights, flooding an otherwise dark room with light. In his peripheral vision, he sees shadows shift, coming towards him, and he raises the gun. Dom pauses a second, letting the projections come closer to be sure that he does not recognize them – they are random figments of Arthur’s mind, and he can take the risk of killing them – before snapping off two quick shots, dropping the projections instantly.

He stops. His heart is thudding in his ears, the car lights flooding over him like spotlights, and he turns away. Behind him stands a boy, a young man really. His dark hair is slicked back and he weas a suit that adds five years to Dom’s original estimation of his age, at least. Arthur’s hands are held out to ether side of him, and his chin raised in defiance. He stares into Dom’s eyes, his own eyes wild.

Dom looks down, dismantling the gun; he pulls the cartridge out and the gun apart before throwing the pieces away, out of the car lights, lost in the darkness. He straightens and mirrors Arthur’s pose, hands out and vulnerable.

“What do you want?” Arthur whispers.

He needs to be blunt. “This isn’t real,” returns Dom. “None of this is real. It is a dream. You must see that this is a dream.”

Arthur laughs, harshly. “I know that. Of course I know that this is a dream,” he says, voice desperate. “Don’t you see? My life is all dreams. What could possibly be more real for me? And here I can’t sit around and do homework. Here I have to fight to survive.”

He drops his hands, and Dom watches him. Arthur walks forward, stopping right before Dom. Dom could reach out and touch him. His face is hard and Dom realizes how desperately he wants to survive, how much he fears dying here, in his dreams.

“I will never be free of my dreams.” He tilts his head slightly, and frowns. “So who sent you? Who wants to drag me out of here?”

Dom considers telling the truth, that his mother sent him, but he doesn’t. Perhaps a lie will be more effective.

“No one sent me, Arthur. I am here to assist _you_. You are the one who sent me here, who brought me here.”

“What?” Arthur takes half a step back.

“Don’t you see, Arthur? I am here to show you something.”

Dom steps forward, one long step that brings him right up against Arthur. Arthur jolts, makes to move backwards, but Dom lifts his hand and runs it, gentle, over the top of Arthur’s shirt collar and along the veins of his neck.

Arthur freezes, staring up at Dom.

“You have control here. You don’t have to dream these dreams if you don’t wish to. In fact, you don’t have to dream at all.”

Half lies, Dom thinks as he speaks them, but not entirely wrong. Arthur is a strong dreamer, able to wrench his dreams away from Dom’s control. He may be able to stop dreaming entirely, if he puts his mind to it. Dom would love to work with this boy; his mind is quick and vibrant. If Dom could teach him about dreaming…

Dom reaches forward and runs his hand down the buttons of Arthur’s waistcoat, and then under his jacket. He presses just hard enough for Arthur to feel it, searching. Arthur’s breath quickens and he shifts forward just slightly, pressing up against Dom. Dom can feel the youthful exuberance of the young man’s erection pressing against his own, provoking a slower, though no less enthusiastic response.

He hesitates, hand still running along Arthur’s waist, considering his wife at home – waiting in reality, not in this dream, _never_ in this dream – and leans forward, pressing his lips against Arthur’s, licking quickly along them. And Arthur gasps; his mouth opens and his hands come up to grasp Dom’s shoulders and he kisses him back. Dom closes his eyes, steels himself against the arousal that blurs his thoughts and sensitizes the tips of his fingers, and reaches, finally grasping it.

He pulls the gun slowly from Arthur’s shoulder holster, backing out of the kiss.

“This is _your_ dream, Arthur. And _you_ are the only one who can control it.”

Dom lifts the gun and slips it into Arthur’s hand. “You can defeat anything here, do anything here. You are not at the mercy of your dreams. They are at your mercy.”

He guides Arthur’s hand, now gripping the gun, up until the muzzle nestles under his chin. Arthur’s eyes are wide.

“There are two ways to wake from dreams, Arthur. The first way is falling. And the second is death.”

He lets go and the gun remains where he positioned it. Arthur’s lips shine in the bright light and his tongue slips out to lick them. He seems very young, suddenly, and Dom doubts. Has he sad that right things, offered the right assurances? Arthur should be able to seize control of his dreams now – they should not terrify him so, but perhaps not, perhaps he has failed to save the boy.

And then, Arthur’s lips come together and curve into the slightest of smiles. His gaze meets Dom’s and he says, “Okay,” in the barest of whispers and the muzzle digs into the soft flesh below Dom’s jaw and there is a loud click—

-

Dom jolts awake, eyes flying open to a bright summer day. Arthur’s mother looks up from where she sits next to her son.

“Did it—“ she begins before breaking off, eyes wide.

Dom pushes up slowly, pulling the needle from his arm and flexing the joint. After a moment, he begins to wind up the tubing back into the PASIV. _Did it work?_ He doesn’t know, and he won’t know. It all depends on Arthur.

But he summons a smile and looks up. “Yes, I think that I was able to help him.”

He leans over, touching Arthur’s hand and staring at the sleeping boy’s face. “His sleep will be calmer now.” And his face is calmer, softened in the afternoon light. He will wake on his own, and he should not fall prey to his dreams again.

Arthur’s mother’s smile is tremulous, but her grip on Dom’s hand is strong. “Thank you,” she whispers over and over, and it takes Dom several minutes and reassurances to pull his hand from hers and walk out the front door of the small house. As he walks away he hears Arthur begin to stir and wake a few rooms away.

Dom quickly gets into his car and turns the key. He should leave – it is better that Arthur does not remember what he said, what he _did_ in the dream, clearly. It is bad enough that Dom slipped a business card into the boy’s hand as he leaned over him, checking his sleep. He smiles.

Perhaps, later, he will receive a call.


End file.
